Ephesians 6:12 in the KJV reads: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Both the NIV and TNIV read: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

Tony Campolo in his recent Speaking my Mind (Nashville: W Publishing Group, 2004), pp. 34-35, connects these principalities and powers with social structures that are in our world that are external to individuals and that have the power to “control the feelings, acts, and thinking of individuals” and coerce us to think and act in prescribed ways. They include “the folkways and mores as well as the various institutions of a society” that assign “people their designated roles within the social order, along with the behavioral patterns that go with those roles. Racism is such a principality and power that we have struggled against. So is sexism.

Hierarchicalists charge that egalitarians are wrong when they deny the principle that there is no necessary connection between women’s roles and their worth. This is a false charge because we do not believe there is a necessary link. School principals certainly do not have more human worth than teachers, and the idea that a white principal would have greater worth than a black teacher is simply outrageously wrong. But if we were to say that the principal role can be filled only by whites and that blacks are ineligible, then personal worth becomes extremely relevant. Why does race matter? Is the black inferior in some way? People used to argue exactly that, but the idea is abhorrent. The same goes for women: people used to argue they were inferior, too; if all women are denied particular roles just because of their gender, the very rule that creates the restriction also creates the lack of equal worth. Blacks didn’t accept discrimination rules, and women, on the whole, given a chance to think about it, don’t either.

Ho, ho! The Feminist Mormon Housewives blog has finally taken up the subject of sex in Mormon families in a posting called Sex Talk. Comments approaching 250.

Andy Rowell noticed three thought-provoking blog posts among 20/30-something bloggers. Below the links are listed and then his summary of some of their practical suggestions.

http://www.generousorthodoxy.net/thinktank/2006/02/more_on_women.html

http://www.thursdaypm.org/blog/rachelle/20060117/be-careful-what-you-wish-for/

http://www.generousorthodoxy.net/thinktank/2006/02/book_discussion.html

The List
1. Be intentional about quoting females.
2. Be an encourager and advocate to women who are working with you and under you.
3. Provide scholarships for women to attend important gatherings and provide childcare.
4. Be intentional about having women be part of the planning team.
5. Leave some space in the conversation for women’s voices.
6. If you are asked to speak somewhere, ask if some of your honorarium can go towards making sure women are there.
7. Invite women in to publish in your journals and books.
8. Keep your eyes open for women doing outstanding things under the radar.

Andy

My denomination, the Reformed Church in America, permitted the ordination of women in 1979, and although over 200 women have been graduated from their seminaries since then, not many get pastorates or other Christian leadership positions. Kristine Veldheer, in “Finding Affirmation,” Church Herald, June 1989, p. 29, said the following: “The greatest frustration for me is the benign neglect I experience within the church. There appears to be a discrepancy between the theology of the RCA and its practice. Despite the fact that women are allowed to attend the seminaries, getting that first call can be problematic. Finding places to complete supervised ministry during seminary was an experience in finding churches that would consider a woman for the task. I have not experienced any intentional negligence in seminary or in being ordained to the ministry. However, I felt strongly a lack of intentional support for women which manifests itself in selling the women short to keep peace in the ranks….

“I see a future for women in the RCA that is cloudy at best. Although some of the pioneers are doing well within the RCA today, there appears to be a major storm brewing in the distance. This storm will either clear a path for women to enter the church as equal partners or will force a major change in which women will have to face the reality of looking elsewhere permanently to do ministry.”

Not much has changed in the seventeen years since she wrote that. After completing seminary training, many female RCA pastors end up serving in other denominations because their own will not have them. Even the process of applying to seminary at the classis level is problematic because their applications languish for lack of action. Having to change churches to change one’s classis is deeply disturbing and only confirms to the women that they are second class church members. Until the RCA finds a way to abolish the conscience clauses in its Book of Church Order, or some other way to effectively bring its conservative pastors in line with the church’s theology, not much is going to change either.

Traditionalists have been railing ever since the 1960’s that feminism causes both males and females to lose their sexual identity. Everything from unisex clothing to — horror-of-horrors — unisex bathrooms were seen as confusing everyone until they didn’t know what sex they were anymore. This simply hasn’t happened. Yes, a few men started wearing ponytails, but then it turned out that the ponytail was our Founding Fathers’ favorite hairstyle. Yes, more unisex bathrooms turned up, particularly in gas stations, but then we’d always had them in our homes without it harming us. Greater opportunities to enter jobs and professions have benefitted families everywhere and the greater social acceptability of following our passions and interests and talents, whether bouncing basketballs, buying bellbottoms, or blowing the blues, has only made us happier, more well adjusted and better paid. Boys are still boys and girls are still girls, but stereotypes have been taking a beating and rightly so.

“Sometimes it is virtually impossible to translate a Greek word into a precise English equivalent or to show the force of the verb tenses,” says historian Ruth Tucker. Since the word “learn” in I Timothy 2:11 is in the imperative tense, the NIV translation of “should learn,” while good, may not be strong enough. “Women must learn” may be better. How different, how radically and wonderfully new, that Christian approach towards women was in the first century from other religions, even if it had to be culturally bound at the time within a virtuous framework of “in quietness and full submission,” although that is a good way for any student to learn in any culture and any time, male or female.

The next verse in the NIV reads, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority [usurp authority (KJV)] over a man; she must be silent.” The word “permit” in the Greek is in the present tense. In English there are three ways of translating the present tense: I permit, I do permit, and I am permitting. The last one has a sense of a present that is ongoing, i.e., I am continuing to permit or I am presently permitting. The Greek word oude, often translated “or,” occuring here between “teach” and “usurp authority” could also be translated “in a manner of.” So this verse could be appropriately translated: “I am not presently permitting a woman to teach in a manner of usurping authority over a man; she must be quiet.” Of course, someone should not teach until she has been properly instructed.

I Timothy 5:3-16 has practical advice on how to care for widows, young and old. Few if any churches these days follow this advice because they know that the advice was for that time and place. And yet the practical advice in I Timothy 2:11-12 (women should keep quiet in church, probably because they weren’t as well trained as the men) who some theologians see was for a particular time and particular place is seen by other theologians as advice for all times, all cultures, and all places.

Biblical interpretation is a tricky business. Who is a church layman to believe?

Quite a large percentage of Christian churches are not very open to winning the lost to Christ. They set up all sorts of barriers that put seekers off, including weird sub-cultural behaviors and even stranger theological interpretations based on non-understanding of ancient cultures, or worse, on just their own sub-cultures and ways of understanding the world. Rigidity of belief was a jewel in the crown of the Pharisees, just as it is in modern-day fundamentalists. Not so with the Apostle Paul.

In I Corinthians 9:19-23 Paul says this: “Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.” TNIV

Concerning this, theologian Walter L. Liefeld wrote in article, “A Plural Ministry View: Your Sons and Daughters Shall Prophesy,” in Women in Ministry: Four Views, eds. Bonnidell Clouse and Robert G. Clouse (Downers Grove, IL InterVarsity Press, 1989), p. 143, the following: “Paul’s principle, then, is not the wearing of veils or the silence of women, but rather conforming to Jewish and moralistic pagan norms for the sake of the gospel…. In biblical times even for a woman to speak publicly was considered a symbol of impropriety…. If a woman speaking in the first century was an offense to the people Paul sought to reach, today it is just the reverse. A society that accepts women as corporation executives and university presidents will find it difficult to listen to a church that silences them…. If some in Paul’s day considered it shameful for women to speak publicly, or to appear without a facial veil, or to have their hair flowing down, what are the implications of the fact that it is shameful in our society today to restrict women from full equality and opportunity? If Paul could accommodate principle without abandoning it, can we say something to those we seek to reach by the equality and opportunities given women in the church…? If not, we may be perpetuating form (the silence of women) while actually abandoning Paul’s principle of accomodation.” And thus severely warping God’s intent for the church today as revealed in the New Testament.

Andy Rowell has posted a couple of excellent bibliographies regarding women in ministry on his blog:

Bibliography of Books - Egalitarian and Complementarian

Bibliography of Commentaries on the Problem Passages